What role does HAL play in open science institutional policies?

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Written by Agnès Magron

152 French higher education and research organisations, including universities and grandes écoles, have a HAL portal to promote all their affiliated authors’ publications.

Carte géographique de la france, découpée en régions avec le nombre de portails institutionnel par région : Ile de France (67), Auvergne-Rhône Alpes (18), Occitanie (14), Bretagne (9), Hauts-de-France (9), Nouvelle Aquitaine (7), Pays de la Loire (7), DROM-COM (5), Grand-Est (4), Provence-Alpes Côte d'Azur (4), Bourgogne-Franche Comté (3), Centre-Val de Loire (3), Corse (1), Normandie (1)

Geographical distribution of institutions with a HAL portal

A portal is a service that enables the creation and administration of an institutional archive. As a HAL feature, a portal enables any institution, such as a research organisation, university, or “grandes écoles”, to manage the scholarly publications of its researchers.

Institutions having a HAL portal make an annual financial contribution to the CCSD. They also participate in the HAL Partners’ Assembly, which is part of the CCSD’s governance.

National Open Science plans make HAL the central infrastructure for opening up publications. Many institutions are implementing these plans and publish their open science policy. These documents are called by a variety of names: charter, commitment, roadmap, recommendations or action plan. The same applies to their contents, which vary in detail.

Since 2023, the CCSD has been listing the open science policies of HAL’s Partners Assembly members on its website. Data from a survey of institutions on their open science policies, carried out by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, has also been used to complete this collection. Thus, 49 policies have been identified so far, to which must be added those of the three CCSD supervisory bodies (CNRS, Inria and Inrae).

This study does not aim to analyse the institutional policies themselves, but rather to identify the role of HAL by checking whether the following elements are mentioned:

  • the institution’s portal,
  • support provided to HAL (annual contribution or allocation of human resources to the CCSD),
  • responsibility for technical validation of deposits (or moderation),
  • laboratory collections and the idHAL researcher identifier.

The analysis was conducted in March 2025.

How is the HAL portal integrated into the institution’s Open Science policy?

Of the 49 policies identified, 42 explicitly mention their institution’s HAL portal. It is most often described as an “institutional open archive.” Other expressions such as “official bibliographic repository” or “official bibliography” are also used to refer to the portal or the use of HAL.
Among the texts that do not mention the word “portal,” three nevertheless identify HAL as the platform for disseminating their publications in open access, and one was published before the portal’s creation (that of the Académie des Sciences).

To assess how firmly the portal is embedded in institutional policy, it is also relevant to check the visibility of the Open Science policy on the portals’ websites: 24 of them provide access to this information. It is most often mentioned on the homepage, either in the introductory text or in the ‘Useful links’ section. Sometimes it can be found in the ‘News’ section, which is less permanent. Four portals have a dedicated ‘Open Science’ page in the menu which outlines the institution’s commitments.

Is support for HAL mentioned?

Since 2022, institutions with a HAL portal have contributed financially to the CCSD. This contribution is based on the number of researchers, depending on whether the institution is a university, “grande école” or research organisation, and helps to sustain HAL technically while enabling infrastructure development tailored to the needs and requests of its users.

Some of the texts were published before this fee was implemented. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, of the 49 Open Science policy documents reviewed, 10 mention this financial support either explicitly or as part of a broader strategy to support international infrastructures (such as DOAJ, for example).

The policies of the three CCSD’s supervisory institutions deserve separate attention. According to CNRS policy, support for HAL is channelled through CCSD development, including the allocation of resources and the creation of new positions. The INRIA document states that the institution is a partner of the CCSD, collaborating with the other two supervisory bodies. However, it does not elaborate on the nature of the support provided. As for INRAE, the term ‘supervision’ (‘tutelle’) does not appear in the document. Instead, HAL is included among the digital infrastructures that the organisation contributes to developing.

Support for moderation

In 2024, 38 institutions are responsible for the technical validation of deposits within their scope (either made through their portal or involving affiliated authors). This task requires human resources dedicated to portal management and researcher support. It is therefore worth checking whether this responsibility is acknowledged in the Open Science policies reviewed. This is the case in 6 of the documents, including 2 that incorporate it into an action plan.

Collections and idHAL: HAL services for laboratories and researchers

13 of the policies reviewed mention support for laboratories in managing a HAL collection, or the systematic creation of collections for them. Similar to a portal for an institution, a laboratory collection groups publications related to a specific research structure. These collections are visible through the portal and enable the institution to showcase its affiliated laboratories.

18 of the policies reviewed mention the idHAL researcher identifier, almost always in conjunction with the ORCID identifier. In most cases, the texts frame this as a ‘recommendation’ and include it within a broader strategy for the adoption of persistent identifiers.

Conclusion

Despite the diversity of Open Science policy documents published by the CCSD’s supervisory bodies and HAL’s partner institutions, it is clear that the archive—along with all its services —is not only acknowledged but also explicitly identified as an essential tool for implementing these institutional policies.

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